cooking with love and affection…

Cranberry Pie

Cranberries are a “superfruit”. They have exceptional nutritional value and are packed with antioxidants, and they just happen to taste great! Cranberries are one of Adam’s favorites. He loves the “pop” of the cranberries in muffins, scones, and juice. Fresh cranberries are too sharp to really enjoy their sweetness, but when they are baked, they yield their sweeter side.

When I was a child, we used to string cranberries and popcorn and place them on the low branches of the trees for the deer and birds at Christmas time. In college, a good friend of mine used to pound glass upon glass of cranberry juice to ward-off an impending urinary tract infection. For Thanksgiving, my mother makes a cranberry jello salad with apples and pineapple that is to-die-for!

Around this time of year, I begin to fantasize about different ways to use cranberries. I’ve used them in pasta, in a quesadilla, and in scones. Adam loves all types of fruit desserts, so I thought I’d try my hand at incorporating our love for cranberries with our love of pie. I found this recipe on Cooking Books, though it is originally from Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking. It is titled, Nantucket Cranberry Pie, but Adam has coined it as “Cranberry Pie Bread Cake” because that is exactly what it is. It doesn’t have the consistency of pie, but it is more like bread or cake. It is dense, but moist and satisfying. The cranberries explode in your mouth with their glorious tang, while the almond extract makes you go “hmm”.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the cranberries, walnuts and 1/2 cup sugar in the bottom of a buttered 9″ or 10″ cake or pie pan. Mix the flour, 1 cup sugar, butter, eggs, and almond extract in a separate bowl to form a batter. Pour the batter over the cranberry mixture and bake for around 40 – 50 minutes. Cool a bit in the pan, and enjoy.